You Can’t Take the Sky From Me…
The premise behind Firefly is fairly deep, but we can only wonder how intricate the series would have gotten had series creator Joss Whedon the chance to continue unfolding the story. Actually, in one of the extra features, Whedon does give some in sight as to the ‘road map’ he had planned for the show and its characters. Anyway, the basic premise is this: the year is 2517 AD. Earth is no longer suitable for life due to the lack of resources, and so humans push their boundaries further out into space. An organization known as The Alliance, built from former US and Chinese government types, is trying to unify the entire human race under one government, and as you might suspect that doesn’t suit everyone too well. Several ‘colonies’ on the outskirts of the system keep their distance, and for the most part their freedom, from the core planets that are under heavy Alliance control, although in doing so they tend to lack in technology and other advancements. This lack of tech is one reason why the show is able to pull off such a great western appearance and persona.
That said, the show stars a former fighter against The Alliance, Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Reynolds now pilots his Firefly-class ship, Serenity, across the system doing various smuggling jobs and other miscellaneous tasks to make a living. His ragtag crew includes a tough, combat veteran woman named Zoe, a wartime friend of Reynolds, and her husband, Hoban Washburne, pilot of the Serenity. Either from the outset or soon after the pilot episode, the crew expands to include Kaylee the mechanic, Inara the companion, Jayne, the gun loving bandit, Shepard Derrial Book, a religious man, and Simon and River Tam. Simon is a skilled surgeon while his sister, River, a curious character who you may remember from the Serenity film; she was medically experimented on by The Alliance before being freed by her brother.
Over the course of the fourteen episodes, the crew engages many nefarious, but very entertaining adventures including battles and close encounters with The Alliance, ship repairs, bounty hunters, stowaways, smuggling, booby traps – there really wasn’t a dull or bad episode in the bunch. Besides being well written and directed, the characters themselves and the use of western themes further helped Firefly stand out from not only other TV programs, but sci-fi media in general; it’s no wonder that the show has topped several ‘best in sci-fi’ lists.
The Blu-ray Release
Firefly on Blu-ray comes packaged in a standard sized keep case so it’ll fit perfectly on your library’s shelf. The case contains three discs that include all fourteen episodes and a nice collection of extras:
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Audio Commentaries – Seven, yes, seven different audio commentaries are available to die hard Firefly fans (which seem to describe just about all of them). Joss Whedon is a part of several of these along with Nathan Fillion, who played Captain Reynolds, but expect input from just about everyone in the cast in one part or another about either an episode or an old making-of anecdote. Included on this Blu-ray release is also a new commentary track featuring Whedon, Fillion, Alan Tudyk (Wash), and Rob Glass (Derrial). The sum of these commentaries is a wealth of information and perhaps a new understanding and appreciation for the show.
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Firefly Reunion – Probably my favorite feature on the disc, this fairly recent feature runs nearly thirty minutes and is in HD. It’s basically a round table discussion with Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, and Rob Glass talking shop about the show and their memories.
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How It Was: Making Firefly – This is a thirty minute feature presented in SD that includes interviews with Whedon and the cast as they discuss their memories of the show including how they got on the show, the fun that was had, the fans, music, effects – all kinds of good material here in this thirty minute feature that is split up into small chapters.
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Deleted Scenes – Four deleted scenes running about ten minutes, in SD, provide us with a little more insight into the series.
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The Tenth Character – A brief feature in SD that discusses the role of the ship, Serenity in the series.
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Alan Tudyk’s Audition – Another brief SD feature that’s self explanatory, but it’s nice to see included on the disc. Tudyk played Hoban Washbourne (Wash) on the show.
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Joss Tours the Ship – Series creator Joss Whedon takes us on an all too brief tour of Serenity in SD.
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Joss Sings the Theme Song – Joss Whedon wrote the catchy theme song that many know by heart, but Sonny Rhodes performed it for the show. In this brief feature, Joss sings his own song.
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Gag Reel – In SD and running roughly three minutes, this is a collection of goofs and outtakes; well worth a watch.
As you can see, this isn’t a bad batch of extras, and it’s great to see Fox added a couple of things from the DVD release. Now as far as the presentation quality of Firefly on Blu-ray, expect great things. This isn’t the nicest Blu-ray release you will see, but overall I have no serious complaints about the quality of the 1080p video that stretches out over three dual layer discs, nor the 5.1 DTS audio track.
Onto the summary…